random ramblings

I'm getting really tired of the ongoing fight to teach my daughter to eat quickly and efficiently.  It's coming to the end of the time when she can just graze all day.  She won't get snacks today.  She'll get meals at mealtimes.  I am too tired of dealing with it, and completely out of patience today.

The imp had two really, really good days, this week...and then he quit behaving and went from purple one day to orange the next.  He only just got green yesterday, and that after getting 9/10 on his spelling test.  I do not know why, or what to do with the boy, sometimes.

Right now, the two are playing in the pixie's room.  I can tell she's starting to wind down and get tired: she's getting extra-sensitive and whiny.  Which means she's getting sleepy.

I do not know what I'm going to do with the imp while she's sleeping today.   He'd be too loud outside, and he'd be chattering at me if I made him stay on the couch...I'd make him take a nap, too, but he doesn't really need one.

Couch and movie it'll be, I guess.  He's been pretty good since he got up.  I'll probably try to bribe him with Thomas the Tank Engine.  And maybe he'll conk out on the couch while he watches, and I can get a few quiet minutes...

Especially if I give him his V8, which he gets every other day*...

Last Wednesday, I was standing in the kitchen, making a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich for the pixie, when I noted Shadow creep under the chair the pixie's booster seat is fastened to.  A few seconds later, Cricket walked past.  Shadow waited until she was nearly all the way past, then jumped out and grabbed Cricket by the butt.  Cricket leaped three feet straight up in the air, then vanished.  Didn't see her again for almost half an hour, and don't have a clue where she hid.

But Shadow was very satisfied with herself.

As I mentioned yesterday, I found a bit of time--about an hour and a half--to work with my pens.  I got all of them either tested, or pulled apart and inspected, and I've put in an order for twenty latex pen sacs between 14/64" and 20/64", and one J-bar for the pen whose bar had rusted through and broken across the bottom of the J.  I should get them sometime within the next five business days.  Looking forward to it so that I can start fixing pens and getting them sold off.

I'll be posting another pen post, likely tomorrow sometime. One of the lever fill pens I function checked with water yesterday checked out.  It's the green Arnold I was half-tempted to keep.  I have it inked up (with Noodler's burgundy to contrast with the green so I can spot any leaks or other issues--and found only some minor burping), and have been using it today.  I'll tell y'all what I can find out about it tomorrow, and post some pictures of the pen, and of the pen with a writing sample.  It is a fairly nice little pen--a true green, like a wheat field, with a bit of chrome trim on the pen proper, and a chrome cap with a gold-toned clip. 

I have one more week on campus before I'm done, and I'll be using that to get caught all the way up on grading so that I can turn in final grades for the 8:00 class by 11:00 on Monday, and for the 9:00 class by 12:00 on Wednesday (just after the end of the final exam times for those classes).  All I have left is the workshop for paper 5, the papers I offered extensions to, the blogs, and any revisions turned in, so not much. 

It really shouldn't take all of my office hours, so I'll have some time for writing.  I'm still pecking away on a science fiction short story and Detritus.  I am still working on them when I get a few minutes to, but it's usually in a draft book long hand when I'm in the elevator, or waiting on being picked up.  I have a few paragraphs' worth written on both, but haven't had the time to transcribe and continue, given the time spent grading.

(Speaking of...I've been working on that a little while I've written this post.)

*There's 260% of the RDA of vitamin A for an adult in the juice.  I don't want my six year old son turning orange, even if it is his favorite color.